


The Bottom Is A Rock

by Kierkegarden



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Drug Abuse, Not Beta Read, Prostitution, Set pre-Season 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 18:41:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18299849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kierkegarden/pseuds/Kierkegarden
Summary: “It’s entrepreneurial,” Klaus interrupts, “Daddy would be so proud that I’m continuing his little tradition! Diego’s got his police school, and Luther’s dad’s personal hitman, and I’m The Seance! Oooh!” He wiggles his fingers and spits the title with such vitriol that it makes Ben recoil.“It would be entrepreneurial,” says Ben, “if you were actually talking to people’s family members.”or the 'how Klaus wound up in prison' story.





	The Bottom Is A Rock

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the Mother Mother song, titled the same way. Also, please read the tags because this is not a happy story and does focus on the harsher and more desperate side of drug addiction.

_i._

 

Klaus doesn’t have a lot to thank his father for. The nightmares, probably, and the fear of authority, and the trouble saying no. There’s a lot to unpack in the Mary Poppins bag that is Klaus’s psyche and the deepest and most uncomfortable baggage was probably stuffed down there long ago by his dear old dad.

Fortunately, there is an upside to being raised as a celebrity weapon of mass destruction; a price-tag on the reputation of superhero.

Allison used it, Klaus thinks, as he looks over the flyers of his face printed on library paper, so why can’t he?

The photo is a bit old, his cheeks more filled out, eyes clearer. In the long run, he’s sure it makes no difference. People see what they want to see and dig in graveyards for dead things until their hands ache. People are always looking for new avenues.

So what if he’s capitalizing on that? All he’s going to do is bring these poor people some comfort! Hell, if someone could manifest into his life and take away his demons, Klaus would bite in a second, no matter what false premise was given.

 _Have you lost a loved one?_ Klaus reads his own business proposal again to himself, _The Seance can help._

He caresses his own black-and-white face.

_Oh, give us this day our daily bread._

Klaus never liked the name _The Seance._ It’s dehumanizing, being referred to as the service you provide. He thinks of Luther -- _Spaceboy_ \-- and shakes his head. If Number One was _The Mailman_ , Klaus would be _The Delivery_. Even prostitutes get a title. Klaus chuckles to himself.

He’s going to do what he does best. He’s gonna reclaim it. Just like when dad told him to stop wearing Allison’s dresses so he stole his own from the local second hand store. Just like the time dad threatened to kick him out, so he left all on his own. Klaus has always been underhanded. He’s always had to be.

And now he’s gonna give the best damned seance anyone has ever seen.

 

_ii._

 

It’s total bullshit, of course. Klaus’s shaking fingers twist his grinder back and forth for the second time that evening, his legs swinging from the bumpy yellow plastic of the play structure. He hasn’t chatted with a corpse for over a year, hasn’t been in the right headspace to hear anything above a whisper. He kisses the grinder and takes a deep breath. _His savior._

Nothing hard, of course, not tonight. Just a thinly rolled joint or two to take the edge off. He’s too broke for anything fancy. That’s the whole point of this scheme, anyway. He can easily make $500 a night on it as long as he’s convincing. That’s more than he could make at a decent job where he’d have to fake skills, drug tests and a home address. It’s really too easy. He doesn’t have to do anything but act.

Just like Allison, Klaus thinks to himself, hopping off the play structure onto the wood chips below.

 

_iii._

He’s charging his phone at the local coffee shop, draped across a couch in purple satin leggings when he gets the first call. It goes off clear and loud in the middle of some poor girl’s open mic performance.

“Oh my God, sorry, sorry, I am _so_ sorry,” Klaus says, shuffling past the rows of chairs and couches to where the night air hits his face with a deep chill, “Hello?”

The woman’s voice on the other end is brittle, clearly older. “Yes,” she says, “Is this The Seance?”

“Mhm,” Klaus feels a shiver run through his whole body because his plan is working. Because daddy didn’t raise him right, but God, did he raise him with the drive and desperation that lends itself to creativity.

“Oh good,” the lady says, “I’d like to set an appointment to make contact with my dear departed Arthur.”

The new found hope in her tone makes Klaus’s excitement come to a screeching halt. He chews on his fingernails.

It’s just like Allison, he thinks, it’s just acting. It’s just giving people something nice to believe in for a few hours until they have to return to their dull, miserable lives. Besides, the cravings are burning under his skin, his mouth is parched dry from it, and he can feel the first shakes manifesting in his fingertips as he holds the phone to his ear.

Klaus’s voice goes thin. He sets a time.

It’s his legacy, he thinks, to play God with these powers, to use these gifts that his father gave him. Klaus had toyed with dropping a flyer at his childhood home, but couldn’t bring himself to go back. Spite has never been a driver for him, so much as survival.

He thinks of surviving. He thinks of the drugs. It’s really that easy.

 

_iv._

 

The first one isn’t the hardest one. Martha is well into her 70s, and Arthur died of lung cancer. Klaus doesn’t have to ask her. He knows when she takes one look at his cigarette and asks him to please put that thing away. Her voice breaks and Klaus thinks it’s going to be harder than it is.

He goes into her house, a half-hoarder den that hasn’t aged since the 70s.

Gesturing to the old newspapers on the coffee table, Klaus recites his plan for the evening in his head.

“May I?”

Martha nods.

_1\. Unfold the purple tie-dye tablecloth that you stole from the Salvation Army and look professional about it._

Klaus hums something indeterminable, laying the table cloth out across the table. It clashes miserably with the pink and white wallpaper.

“So,” he finds himself asking, “Where did Arthur work?”

Martha leans back against the brown upholstery of her chair. “The mill. He gave that place his last thirty years. Didn’t miss a day of work in twenty.”  
  
_2._ _Gather as much information about the dead guy as possible before the ritual begins._

Martha flinches as he takes his lighter out of his bag again, but softens as he follows it by two large black candles. He flicks the lighter on and turns down the lamp and soon the room is flooded in the eerie yellow cast of flame.

“Close your eyes,” says Klaus, “and hold on to my hands.”

Klaus hopes she doesn’t notice how clammy and cold they feel against her soft, warm skin. He hopes she can’t smell the weed on his clothes, that she doesn’t notice how brittle his nails are, the yellow of his teeth.  
  
_3.  Think of the drugs. Think of the drugs. Think of the drugs._

When it’s over, Klaus lets himself exhale. He flicks on the lights and Martha wipes her eyes on a handkerchief.

“I,” she says and his heart nearly shatters, “I can’t thank you enough. To think, after all these years, the Umbrella Academy kids are still out there doing good in this world. It gives me hope, you know?”

Klaus leaves with a handful of crisp benjamins, which quickly disintegrate into powder.

 

_v._

 

I’m Jesus Christ, Klaus thinks, his thoughts a manic recap of his life’s greatest hits, I can walk on water.

He pulls the tourniquet taut in his teeth and shoots up slow.

Jesus Christ, he thinks, and all his thoughts fade to an muddled ocean of bliss.

 

_vi._

 

The second time is indefinitely harder. For one, it’s easy to lie to a lonely old woman trapped in a dungeon of her own making. It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re only helping her. It’s quite another thing to look into the eyes of a ten year old child whose mother has literally just kicked the bucket -- to look into those wide, shimmering planets of eyes -- and just spew complete bullshit.

Klaus tries to focus. He tries so desperately hard. He’s lit the candles and turned down the lights and is asking the “spirit” for it’s “humble blessing” (as if spirits are the ones playing hard to get, as if he doesn’t have to resort to destroying his body and his mind just to get them out). He’s done everything, and the little shit goes, “Why did mom have to go? Can you ask her, Klaus? Can you ask her why she had to go and die?”

Klaus is speechless. Suddenly, the gravity of what he’s doing crashes down all around him. He’s never been close with his mom, but he’s been that little boy. He’s been in that dark, desperate place, scrambling for answers, blaming himself, transitioning from saying “my brother” to “my dead brother”. He hasn’t seen Ben, not even the apparition, for over five months.

“She says,” starts Klaus, and feels like an eight year old Diego, stuttering like a moron, “Sh--she says that it isn’t your fault. She says sometimes it’s just...it’s just the way things need to be.”

“But _why?”_ the kid’s voice is suddenly angry, “Can she just tell me why?”

Klaus feels his stomach deepen like a tar pit. “She...she tried to fight the cancer but it won, okay? It just won. That’s just the way it is. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.”

His skin itches all over, and he can’t keep his mind together enough to really stay focused on his three-step get rich quick scheme. Klaus is actually surprised when he finds the check for five hundred dollars being shoved into his hand at the end of the night with a curt _thank you_.

Only then does it become easy to think about the drugs, because they are just on the other side of the paywall and isn’t it funny, Klaus thinks to himself, how much easier it is to justify this when the carrot is dangling right in front of his face?

He slips himself a couple of klonies that he’s been rationing with superb control and falls into the dull void of sleep.

 

_vii._

 

Klaus wakes up and immediately jumps. Ben is sitting on top of the monkey bars staring down at him, the look on his face absolutely livid.

“Welcome to the world of the living,” Ben says, not so much as flashing a smile at what, Klaus thinks, should be phrased as a joke.

Klaus rubs his eyes, blinking deliriously. “Son of a biscuit! What the hell -- how the hell are you here?”

“Oh you mean,” Ben gestured to Klaus’s backpack. It has things besides drugs in it, thank you very much, like toilet paper and condoms and the bags of gummy worms that his super market buddies let him steal in exchange for a couple hits, but Klaus gets the implication.

Ben lets himself down from the monkey bars, floating gently to the wood chips below. “What in the world do you think you’re doing, Klaus?”

“I could ask you the same thing, actually, seeing as you must have fought pretty hard through the haze of strong ass shit I’ve been buying with my hard earned money just to come lecture me like you’re dad and I’m...I’m doing the climb of shame up the ladder outside the attic window.”

Ben narrows his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, “I fought pretty hard to come here and tell you to stop so here it is. You need to stop, Klaus.”

“You’re not my mom!” says Klaus and then he swallows, thinking about that kid yesterday and his eyes like flying saucers.

“It’s fucked up to poison other people’s lives. It’s one thing to mess up your own body, it’s another --”

“It’s entrepreneurial,” Klaus interrupts, “Daddy would be so proud that I’m continuing his little tradition! Diego’s got his police school, and Luther’s dad’s personal hitman, and I’m _The Seance!_ Oooh! _”_ He wiggles his fingers and spits the title with such vitriol that it makes Ben recoil.

“It would be entrepreneurial,” says Ben, “if you were actually talking to people’s family members.”

“You just wanna make me quit because if I’m using, you’re just a dead guy who can’t watch movies or go get donuts. Without me, you’re just dead, Ben.”

Klaus grits his teeth, looking down, and instantly regrets saying anything.

_My dead brother._

 

_viii._

 

Drugs make him lose focus and shit starts to unravel when Klaus loses focus. That’s the downside to making so much money.

The first time it happens, Klaus manages to catch himself. He had taken note of some family photos and made guesswork of the relations, had mistaken a an aunt for a sister, and had slipped up.

“What she means,” Klaus had said, scrambling for words, “is that she loved you like a sister.”

Apparently, that was enough to restore the family’s faith in him. People were so gullible, he had found, when you fed them exactly what they wanted to hear.

Klaus hadn’t always been like this. He remembered a time when he swore he would never snort anything, and then a time when he swore he would never mainline anything. There was a time, he could just barely recall, when he thought he could live without the drugs.

The second time Klaus fucks up, it all happens too hard and fast to scale himself back up the mountain.

He’s sitting in the foyer of some rich asshole who’s paying him a couple _thousand_ dollars to have phone sex with his dead trophy wife. It’s strange, Klaus thinks, that what people will pay for genuine love is severely undercut by what they’ll throw at you for some good old fashioned sex. It’s all the same to him though. In fact, this way it’s probably better. This way, Klaus doesn’t have to worry about feelings or children or old widows in their rockers.

Swaying slightly in the man’s white leather couch, Klaus lays out the table cloth and the candles. He grabs hold of the man’s hands and asks the spirit to show herself.

“I…” Klaus feigns concentration, “I...have her…”

The man across from him, Brighton is his name, flashes his sharp blue eyes towards Klaus. “Tell her to go away.”

Klaus clears his throat. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

“Tell her,” Brighton lowers his voice dangerously, “to go away. I want to chase her.”

Klaus nods, his mouth suddenly very dry.

“She says she’s ready for you to come find her,” he offers, voice lilting teasingly, “she’s somewhere in this house.”

Suddenly, he feels Brighton drop his hands, hears a creak and before he can comment, the lights flash back on.

“What the --”

“You’re high,” says Brighton, “or you’re just through using.”

“What?” Klaus doesn’t have to feign confusion.

“Get up.”

Something in Brighton’s tone reminds Klaus very much of his dad, so much so that he immediately gets to his feet like a frightened child, back straight against the wall. Brighton is walking towards him at a rapid pace and Klaus feels his heart pounding, right against his rib cage.

 _You need to stop, Klaus,_ Ben’s voice sounds in his mind, even though he is gone -- fucked right off to the ghost casino or something, leaving Klaus alone with his mess.

“Dull eyes,” Brighton says, “gaunt face, the dark circles, thinning hair, dry skin, your teeth…open your mouth for me.”

Klaus does as he’s told.

“Yes,” Brighton smirks, “I see a cocktail of different substances all over your body.”

Klaus stands very, very still.

“So what?” he whispers, “Do you wanna talk to your wife or not?”

“I don’t think that was ever an option,” Brighton smiles menacingly, the fluorescents reflecting off his shiny bald head, and Klaus has never felt so small and exposed.

“Look --”

“I don’t believe in superheroes,” Brighton’s fingers are right at his throat and for a minute Klaus thinks he’s going to strangle him, but instead they just start playing with the collar of his vest, flicking the fabric back and forth against Klaus’s neck.

“You know what I do believe in?”

Klaus’s thoughts return to the air moving in and out of his lungs.

_Focus on survival._

“I believe in pretty little junkie sluts who are too hooked to say no to the promise of cash.”

 

_ix._

 

Klaus’s body ruts dangerously against the counter top, its linoleum corner digging a deep red line against his exposed abdomen. His mind is dull, heart beating in sync to the pounding.

The warning signs were there. There is no one to blame but himself. His mind flashes back to his three point plan and he wonders if there is a way to get so high he never has to come down, that he never has to think about this again.

It feels so natural, is the thing, Klaus bent over so far that Brighton keeps accidentally hitting his sweet spot, and it’s really not so bad, he thinks, in the thick of it. And God, will it be worth it. Brighton’s wallet can buy him so. damned. much.

Maybe, Klaus thinks, this is the good upstanding work his dead brother was talking about.

Maybe, Klaus thinks, this is what he was born for.

Maybe, Klaus thinks, he could get used to this.

 

_x._

 

“The difference between being a fake medium for drug money and a real prostitute for drug money really boils down to how you feel after,” Klaus pulls the tourniquet taut. Again. He wills his fingers to stay steady.

“When you’ve just scammed some poor family for what little they have,” he continues, through his teeth, the words coming out all messy. He’s not even sure Ben can understand him, “In that moment, you feel horrible but afterwards, after the high sets in, it’s easy for all that to fade away.”

He releases the tourniquet and taps his veins. Rolled, busted. Shit, shit, shit. “When you’re having sex with some rich fetishist and he wants you to dress in an Umbrella Academy uniform and call him daddy, you tell yourself it’s okay. You tell yourself it’s worth it. But afterwards,” -- ah, there we go. The needle slides smoothly down and Klaus throws his head back again the plastic. -- “Afterwards, you feel vile. Just...poisoned.”

He’s waiting for it to set in when Ben does something unexpected. His body begins to shake as though he’s about to release the depths of seven different hells from his belly, and then suddenly he’s crying, sitting next to Klaus, reaching for the needle with spectral fingers.

“Shit, Klaus,” Ben says, all snot and tears, and redness, “You really need to get help. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep watching this, helplessly, until one day I see you on the other side, for real. _Please,_ Klaus, this is too far, even for you. _Please.”_

The word lingers, bridging the synapse between Klaus’s consciousness.

 

_xi._

 

“Please...come on, come on!”

The whir of motion and flashing lights and ringing sounds meet Klaus’s body with a sudden start. He’s lying on his back in an ambulance, staring up at a man’s face. Klaus’s eyes narrow, still blurry, still woozy and out of it -- focusing in on his scrubs. An EMT, Klaus thinks and cracks a smile. Oh my God, he thinks, I actually did it. I almost ended it all. Ben would be --

“Four baggies,” he hears a woman say from the other side of the ambulance, “I’m seeing a white powder, some pills, some gummy candies, the fourth one is empty. Besides that, we’ve got a pack of cigarettes, can of beans, some toilet paper, and five hundred and sixty-five dollars in cash, not to mention the needle in his arm.”

“Melinda,” says the EMT, “He’s back with us now.”

I’m going to go back to rehab, Klaus thinks, with a sinking feeling, or worse. He somehow wishes that they had let him die.

 

_xii._

 

“So,” Ben says, “It can only go up from here.”

Klaus pauses what he’s doing -- which happens to be itching madly at his arms below the rough white undershirt of his prison uniform. These things are so uncomfortable, and he’s scared shitless, and craving wildly. Ben is a welcome sight.

“I don’t know how I let it get so out of control,” Klaus says, “It’s just...one thing led to another, and here we are.”

Just another _look at me now, dad_ moment in a long fucked up series of them. Klaus finds himself idly wishing that he had left that flyer in his childhood home, the one with his face circa sobriety and his three-step business plan.  
  
_1. Lie (sometimes down, sometimes convincingly)_  
  
_2\. Think of the drugs_  
  
_3.  Profit_

“It’s going to be okay,” says Ben, “If there’s one good thing to come out of this, it alleviates the element of temptation.”

Klaus twists his head into one hand while the other pinches the nerve at the base of his neck. “Why does it have to be this hard?”

“That’s just the way it is,” Ben says gently, sitting beside him on his bunk, “Sometimes life just isn’t fair.”

“And death?”

“Boring. Lonely. Depressing. You’d hate it.”

“Ouch,” says Klaus.

Ben smiles. “Well, not as depressing now that you’re getting sober.”

“I am,” says Klaus and he’s surprised when it doesn’t come out like a question.

 

_xiii._

 

Klaus wakes up from that dream again, where he’s hitting the ocean’s floor and it just keeps sinking lower and lower around him -- no foundation -- until he’s fully enveloped by quicksand.

“Hey,” says Ben, “The worst of it is over now.”

Klaus rubs his eyes. “You’re watching me sleep again.”

 

_xiv._

 

On the television in the common room, some trashy reality show is talking about Allison’s divorce. Klaus is turned away, turned towards the calendar and the clock, trying to calculate the exact number of days, hours, minutes, until he is free to walk. He is also desperately trying to ignore the footage of his sister crying her eyes out at the trial.

The thing about being a Hargreeves is that you never hit rock bottom. At one point, Klaus thought it was the mausoleum. Another time, he thought it was getting evicted -- or the night he spent pawing around in the alleyway for half-smoked cigarette butts, half-naked and high as shit til the sun rose the next morning.

The thing about being a Hargreeves is that you can try to cling to the past forever but it will just slip through your fingers. The thing about being a Hargreeves is that you can try to use your powers for good and they will just betray you. The thing, Klaus thinks pointedly, about being a Hargreeves is that you can thrash around forever looking for normalcy or you can give up on all that and look for an escape.

 

_fin_


End file.
